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Jessye Norman has died at the age of 74. She was one of the finest singers of her generation, though she did not in fact perform opera as much as her contemporaries or the generation slightly before...

Maya Plisetskaya has died at the age of 89. She was one of the finest ballerinas of the last 100 years and established her reputation during and after the Stalinist period which saw her father shot...

Too slow! It is a dance, not a funeral march.

I saw Natalia Osipova in Swan Lake this week, and I must say that in all the years I have spent watching outstanding dancers, I have rarely seen...

The previous link worked well. It is just one of those things, there is a programme on BBC Radio 3 on Sundays called Words and Music which alternates between the two and often with great effect, I...

Thank you for the link, unfortunately I think it is mistake and that the juxtaposition of words and music in this case does not work, although it does confirm that Ravel's music is superior to...

Another Macmillan ballet, this one a beautifully realised short piece in full with the superb American dancer Amanda McKerrow. I love Prokofiev's violin concerto but think Macmillan should have used...

I recently bought a dvd of the Royal Ballet's performance of Mayerling, the full-length, 3 Act ballet created by Kenneth MacMillan in 1978. Hailed by some as a masterpiece the ballet has some great...

I don't mind people disagreeing with me, although it does disappoint me when they cannot produce an argument to explain why. What does mystify me is why people with no real interest in classical...

Your talent is clearly wasted on this thread, had you written this on a brick wall you might even now be cashing in your cheque and ordering that two-door Ford Tango. Banksy better watch out!

The Door, by Magda Szabo.
First published in 1987 in Hungarian when the writer was 70 years old, I was recommended this book by an Hungarian I met, and I was not disappointed (by either). It is a...

If I had been able to read it I would tell you, but it is to my mind the kind of writing that alienates the reader by not letting them into the narrative. That doesn't mean writing has to be simple...

I have strong opinions, I think that it what you find difficult to cope with -you have not attempted to provide any criteria for what makes great literature, you just list well-known writers on the...

I did not say there have not been any achievements in the last 50 years, just 'not many', and all your list of well-known writers proves is that you can write a list of well known writers. I would...

Falling Out of Time, David Grossman (2014).

There have not been many achievements in fiction in the last 50 years or so, one thinks of the melancholy but seductive fictions of WG Sebald as a high...

I have managed to read Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (2004). I wanted to read this book before seeing the film which opens in the UK at the end of February.

Cloud Atlas is made up of six...

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/nov/03/five-symphonies-that-changed-music

The BBC is going to broadcast a series of programmes on the Symphony, but I am puzzled by the selection. I am not...

You kept that a secret all this time? I am waiting for the Turin Horse to come out. But yes, an acquired taste -

I forgot to mention that Finlandia is one of my favourite Sibelius pieces, it is...

Thankfully it took, and I've learned and experimented with music and literature that was new to me as a result, although I draw the line at Stavros' championing Bela Tarr's seven-hour Hungarian...

Yvonne -to prove that even people who lust after transexuals and want to discuss who, when, where, how much, at what time, in what position, wearing what?, how old?, with or without, high or low,...

The crowning scene of this Second Act perhaps of the whole work is the duet between Parsifal and Kundry

Erika, there are no duets in Parsifal, only conversations; and while you are entitled to...

I agree, the problem with music is that when critics discuss it politically, they are not actually talking about the music qua music, which is the flaw in the arguments proposed by Rose and Weiner on...

I don't know what to make of Vienna, it has been a focal point in the classical tradition and yet there is a consistent tug of war between traditionalists and radicals: Mozart and Beethoven and later...

Music seems to generate some odd responses in people -first, Lisa Gasteen is a good but not a great singer, I wouldn't make an extra effort to go and see her. Second, the final movement of...

I would have expected you to walk further up Trumpington St to Loch Fyne to enjoy your Scottish heritage...

Meanwhile the bookies have slashed Bob Dylan's odds of winning the Nobel Prize for...